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Mistral Medium vs Mixtral 8×22B

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Mistral Medium specs · Mixtral 8×22B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Mixtral 8×22B does not.

  • Context windowMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 64K, 2.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessMixtral 8×22B

    Mixtral 8×22B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Mistral Medium is API-only.

On balance Mistral Medium edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Mixtral 8×22B's 1. Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Mixtral 8×22B does not. Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 64K, 2.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Mixtral 8×22B ships open weights (Apache-2.0); Mistral Medium is API-only.

Mistral Medium is the newer of the two, released 8 months after Mixtral 8×22B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Medium is usually picked for customer support and chatbots workloads, while Mixtral 8×22B sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecMistral MediumMixtral 8×22B
ProviderMistralMistral
ReleasedDec 2024Apr 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens64K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.40 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$2.00 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsNoYes (Apache-2.0)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day$4.20 vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$42.00 vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$72.00 vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Mistral Medium$0.140
  • Mixtral 8×22BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Mistral MediumMixtral 8×22B
  • MMLU,77.8
Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

  • Mid-tier balance
  • EU-friendly
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 64K for Mixtral 8×22B.
Pick Mixtral 8×22B if

Mixtral 8×22B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0
  • MoE economics
  • Mature
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMistral Medium vs Mistral Large 2Mixtral 8×22B vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Mistral Medium or Mixtral 8×22B cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 64K for Mixtral 8×22B.
  • Is Mistral Medium or Mixtral 8×22B better for coding?
    Both Mistral Medium and Mixtral 8×22B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Mixtral 8×22B ships open weights (Apache-2.0). Mistral Medium is API-only.
  • When were Mistral Medium and Mixtral 8×22B released?
    Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18. Mixtral 8×22B was released by Mistral on 2024-04-10.
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